Trump’s Auto Manufacturing Claims Clash With Industry Data

As President Donald Trump travels the country to rally support for Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections, he is touting his economic agenda and crediting GOP-backed tariffs with industry growth including what he says are more vehicle manufacturing plants all over the country.

Speaking at a Baltimore shipyard earlier this week, he credited his administration with drawing automakers back from at least five countries and painted a picture of historic plant construction after decades where there had been none at all.

But while Trump has found some success in boosting car manufacturing to the U.S. and forging deals within the industry, much of what he said was overblown or untrue. Trump, on Tuesday: “We didn’t build a car plant for 44 years in this country. Now we’re building more car plants than we ever have in history.” It is not true that a vehicle factory has not been built in the U.S. in 44 years. The U.S. is also not currently building more auto manufacturing plants than it ever has.

More than two dozen major new vehicle assembly plants opened in the United States during the past four decades, based on the manufacturer histories, public records and data from industry group Autos Drive America. Others have been bought, retooled or repurposed.

That said, the U.S. has seen some significant automotive manufacturing movement under Trump. So far in Trump’s second term, Rivian broke ground on a second factory in Georgia, and the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America opened there, too. At the time, Trump praised Hyundai and touted the news as “a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work.” In his first term, Mazda and Toyota announced a mammoth joint vehicle facility in Huntsville, Alabama and Volvo’s first U.S. plant opened in South Carolina.

The developments under Trump broadly align with what’s been happening over at least the last two decades, experts say.“We’ve always made lots and lots of the cars that people are buying here.

If you buy a Honda in the U.S., it’s more likely that that was made in the U.S. That was true long before Trump,” said Joshua Hausman, University of Michigan associate professor of economics. “There have been car factories built regularly over the past few decades.” The White House provided a list of projects that total more than $50 billion in investments by automakers, which the administration credits to the president’s trade agenda. Among them are a $10 billion investment from Toyota said to be for operations across the country the automaker has not confirmed it will be for adding plants and plans by Stellantis to invest $13 billion in expanding its U.S. footprint. Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Mercedes-Benz are said to be investing some $15 billion in projects of their own.

“The President successfully launched a manufacturing renaissance with trillions of dollars in investments pouring into our country,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, crediting the investment to Trump’s America First Trade Agenda.

But not all of the news under Trump has specifically been for all-new vehicle assembly, and Trump’s accomplishments don’t differ much from President Joe Biden’s administration and others, industry experts noted. As with Trump, the U.S. saw the opening of both new and retrofitted auto plants under Biden. EV manufacturers Rivian reopened a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill. and Lucid opened a plant in Casa Grande, Ariz.

Tesla opened an all-new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. Ford opened the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, and began construction on BlueOval City, a complex for EVs and batteries, in Stanton, Tennessee.

GM announced its plans to pour $7 billion into EV and battery plants in Michigan, and Vietnamese automaker VinFast said it would build an EV plant in North Carolina.

As of this year, Autos Drive America counted 51 total light vehicle assembly plants operating in the U.S., down just slightly from 52 five years earlier. Trump: “Our car industry is coming back. They’re leaving Canada, they’re leaving Mexico, they’re leaving Japan and Germany, South Korea. ”Volkswagen began assembling vehicles in the U.S. in the late 1970s; Honda, Nissan, Toyota and various European manufacturers followed suit in the 1980s — around the 44 year timeframe that Trump referred to earlier this week. These companies now make and sell millions of vehicles in the U.S. each year.

American vehicle manufacturing and auto assembly jobs began to decline at the same time as domestic automakers lost market share to those foreign-owned companies.

The U.S. industry’s woes came to a head during the 2008 financial crisis under the Bush administration. American companies faltered while foreign automakers, and demand for their vehicles, grew. The nation saw more imported vehicles and increased production abroad.